


Hitting Bottom

by xlta



Category: Fight Club (1999), Fight Club - All Media Types, Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Genre: F/M, Fight Club is the best thing ever, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 13:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4062472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xlta/pseuds/xlta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyler was everything I wasn't and I... just was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

         If a 1,700 sq ft condo is blown to pieces and no one is around to witness it, does it really make a sound? The answer is yes. It also creates enough flames to send the fire company rushing over, and the police to think of arson. Chances are, eventually they'll find an exorbitant amount of flammable gas that had been circulating throughout your home silently, thanks to the noise blocking concrete placed between each tenant. In this case, silent is the most deadly. Because of this, not only do they think of arson but they'll think you did it too. Maybe you were in debt, most young people were. Consumerism truly is a tragic flaw. The whole time they're interrogating you over the phone you'll deny their claims vehemently though because you know you didn't do it. Tyler did.  
      Tyler fucking Durden. The name practically rang in my head. I remember the exact way he said it too, as he tilted his pack of cigarettes my way and I shook my head. I don't smoke... at least I didn't at the time. Add that to the list of habits Tyler got me into.  
When I first met Tyler, I felt like I had known him before. Kind of like that friend you feel like you've known all your life. We completed each other in a way; he was all the things I wasn't and I... just was. That was Tyler's biggest pet peeve. I had no calling, no definite urge to stay on this shit-hole planet. When he had asked me how I would feel if I died that very instant, I had just shrugged and loosened the collar of my prim button up work shirt. Why did it matter if it wasn't going to actually happen? That really did him in.  
      Fast forward to present day. Tyler had just asked me the same question and I had given him the same lack luster response. Currently, he was smashing a beer bottle on the wall of our ramshackle home and pressing it to my neck. "You could die at any second!" he yelled. "What's your biggest accomplishment? Have you reached your full potential?!" I stood still, paralyzed in not fear, but maybe caution. After Tyler had blown up my condo and decimated all of my belongings, death was sort of just an acceptance at this point. Almost a wish. My soul had died alongside of all those shards of furniture, piles of ash as high as my grief.  
       I imagined the cold glass slicing my neck open, inch by glorious inch until I bled out... the blood just oozing down my crisp shirt. Then I imagined trying to say my last words with a severed voice box, the staccato vowels being pushed out with every gush of blood my throat regurgitated. And all with this look of bewilderment on my face. Like when a kitchen appliance you've used every morning starts to malfunction and you threw the user manual out years ago. A giggle escaped my lips and I could feel the chunk of glass flirting with my skin again. "What the fuck's so funny pretty boy?" Tyler spat his words out at me. I knew he wouldn't actually cut me and that's what made this whole thing even funnier. He wouldn't do it because he knew once I died, he died too... all his spirit and ambition gone to waste, literally. At this rate if we died in this hell hole, nobody would probably realize we were missing or come to save us. We'd just rot alongside somebody else's belongings, decomposing slowly with water damaged issues of magazines no one read anymore. Legacies ruined so innocently.  
       He wouldn't do it, even though he pressed the glass deeper into my goose-bumped throat and urged me that he was "very fucking serious." That's when I couldn't help myself anymore and I just let loose, reenacting the scene I had just played in my mind multiple times. Cue the fake choking and spurting up of blood, cut to the scene where the wide and unintelligible sounds work their way up from my almost dead vocal chords. Insert the reel where Tyler's shaky hands drop the shank and he starts laughing his guts up. End. Tyler was now facing the corner of the room coughing up some vile black goo that was probably the leftovers of last nights shitty meal and all the cigarettes he smoked. "This is your fault for making me laugh," he said in between gasps for air.  
     "Aww you poor baby. Want me to breathe some life back into you? I can call up Marla, she might be able to help," I taunted. Tyler's seizing cough stopped and he whirled around so quickly I thought he might actually come after me. Instead, he cut enough daggers into me with his eyes to make up for a months worth of slitting my throat. "I told you not to bring her up around me," he said. His voice had a hint of anger in it which was unusual for the imperturbable monk Tyler. "Yeah, yeah, yeah I know. I forgot." There was a silence where he looked at me expectantly and I worried if he wanted an apology from me or something. With Tyler, anything was possible... even the excruciatingly awkward silence between a crazy motherfucker and someone who just hurt his feelings. But I didn't say anything though, just looked down at my hand with the scar on it; the one Tyler gave me. We stood like that for what felt like ever.  
      "Good job at not apologizing. Maybe you are getting closer," he said and I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. It was quickly replaced with the weight of Tyler's full body as he jumped on my back and hugged me from behind. Why did he always have to play with people's emotions? I staggered into the counter to hold myself up. Tyler was still on my back but his face was dangerously close to mine and his lips practically touched my ear. "You wanna know what really keeps me going?" I could feel his hot breath on my jawline and time seemed to come to a standstill. Maybe it did. There were never any clocks in this place. A three story McMansion with not a single piece of plastic to keep the fucking time. How useless. But I didn't need a timer to know that my heart rate was higher than the walls surrounding us. In fact, it had burst it's way through the collapsing shambles of roof that covered our heads most of the time. I froze, suddenly more than willing to hold Tyler up against me.  
      "What is it? Tell me." My voice was hoarse from laughter. Tyler's voice had a sort of permanent rasp to it now-a-days but then again anything would when it could kill a pack of cigarettes in an hour. I never complained though, I thought it gave him more character. When he spoke again, his voice was so close to my face I thought maybe he had found a way into my brain and was just transmitting the signals there. His words went right through my ears and for a second, we could have been one person. My lungs inhaling, his lungs exhaling. Right onto the back of my neck. "The thought of getting to see you naked when you bathe." The cigarette rasp was back. Just the way his tongue curled in his mouth to form the words was like foreplay. Tyler's mouth. Swollen and bruised from all the times we fought for fun, puckered on the inside from when the few teeth he had left pierced through his gums. Not that I knew any of this from first hand experience... I just did because he did. I imagined kissing him right now- our bloody lips mixing with each other's saliva until you couldn't tell whose bloody spit you'd just swallowed. My tired tongue exploring it's way around all the rough and scarred skin that would be left like that forever. Our own personal signatures on each other.  
       Tyler had pressed his wet lips to my neck now and my heart sped up. The last time those lips touched my skin, it had been followed by the worst experience of my life ever. A chemical burn that Tyler said would bring me one step closer to hitting bottom. The only thing I hit was my head when I fell on the piss soaked laminate we called a floor. It's how I got the scar. I shivered and I knew that Tyler could feel it but after you've been through fight clubs and chemical burns you don't care about your pride or dignity anymore. Those kind of things just sort of fall into a background hum when you realize every breath could be your last. I knew that now more than ever. I struggled to catch my breath, his breath, a single unit of oxygen would have been paradise at this moment.  
"Shit. Really?" I asked, trying my best to hide the emotion fighting to claw it's way out of my chest. The thought turned me on more than ever. I knew he wouldn't say yes but I also knew when he said no, he wouldn't really mean that.  
       "Fuck no!" He jumped down from my back and punched me straight in the stomach. I am Jack's abject feeling of rejection. I knew better than to fall for his tricks, but sometimes I could of sworn he was the insurance claim reviewer, lying through his blood stained teeth. That's how good he was at making a believable story. If Tyler had told me that the Eiffel Tower was not really a tower, but that it was just French people were so short I probably would have fallen for it. If I was as dumb and diluded as everyone else. But I had been around Tyler enough to know he just did things to get a rise out of people.  
I am Jack's stomach acid rising to the esophagus. The punch really hurt for multiple reasons. One, it sent my stomach into shock and now I'm throwing up fluids that were never meant to touch human air. It burns bad and I can tell I will be sore for a few days afterward. The next fight club is in two days and I hope I'm better by then- I have a lot of anger I'd love to take out on someone. Second, my heart is crushed. Like little origami cranes that busy-body mother's and housewife's take so much time to make, but it take's only half that time for them to be smashed to pieces. I'm devastated, pissed off, let down but I can't let Tyler know. Part of his whole thing is learning the skills of the ever-calm monks in who the fuck knows where. It's very Buddhist. And for some reason I can't see monks getting bent over what has just happened so I bite my tongue, I bite it so hard I think a piece falls off and I have to spit it out. In the process, Tyler speaks for me.  
        "Hit me back," he says coolly. Of course. I roll my eyes and swallow back a mouthful of dried blood. It's bitter but then again, so am I. "Come on Tyler not now. I'm not in the mood." I try to turn around but he stops me. My patience is running thin. "I know. You're in an angry mood, I can tell. So take your anger out on me." Permission. It's no longer about words, fighting never is. For me, it's pure unadulterated emotion, a sweet sweet release and I deserve it. So I swing back around, my fist meeting with the bottom of Tyler's jaw- the same place he lingered minutes ago on me. He takes a step back but I'm not done... not even close. I lunge towards him and just let off an assault of punches. I don't even care where I hit him anymore, but his face is my main target. That pretty face with the already bruised eyes and red cheeks from where previous people's knuckles met. I want to destroy that face, the one I fantasized about kissing, the one that so quickly put me in my place. Fuck Tyler. I hope he rots in Hell. But we both know that will never happen, not unless I die first.  
        Finally after I hear the crack of a tooth and the sound of it hitting the ground do I stop. Tyler's back is against the wall and I've pressed my body against his to keep him there. Not that'd he ever run from a fight. He looks at me carefully, trying to calculate what must be going through my mind at this moment. Destruction, that's what. I've only learned from the best. His face is pretty messed up I note, something that'd make even a father cringe and suggest he see a hospital. But Tyler and I never had fathers- we might as well have been raised by wolves.


	2. Chapter 2

"Rebellion. What a beautiful word. Each syllable making love to your mouth like a french kiss with death. Fires and riots rolling off the tongue, inevitable of any good revolution. A burning that never ends, like cigarettes lit to busy the hands and demons disguised as daydreams... crushed between your teeth like ice in the drinks used to drown them. You have not pioneered this feeling. Dysphoria will settle in us all like civil unrest, each task set before us an assault to our senses; grenades thrown at the empty holes where hearts used to lay. We are all ticking time bombs, ravaged by the flames of our own impulses. But it is up to us to rebuild, our predecessors decay used to nurture the birth of our own new vision. And that's just how it will it start. When the urge to expel an important thing pokes and prods inside you, you are left with no other option than to slay it and use its blood to pen your own manifesto. Think long and hard. You can either let yourself be the remains of some pencil pusher's floor plan or you can grab him by the neck-tie and take control. You choose."  
Tyler's talking again. Walking through rooms and just reciting this important thing he must have thought up last night.  
"What do you think? Should I tell it to the boys at fight club?" I'm sitting on the remains of a couch in our crumbling home, flipping through some of the less crude magazines that sit in stacks next to me. I sometimes wonder if those stacks of magazines are what hold this place together. It sure isn't brick and mortar. For a minute I say nothing because I'm really engrossed in the article I'm reading; something about Peruvian mountain tribes. But then I notice the quiet around me and I set the magazine on my lap and look up. Tyler's standing right in front of me with his arms crossed.  
"You weren't even listening."  
My voice almost sounds defensive when I answer him. "It sounds good but I'm not sure if everyone there will get it."  
"Then maybe they shouldn't be in fight club." He looks at me with an air of superiority I just can't compete with.  
I'm shocked. "You can't say that. Everyone deserves something in their life. Refuge from the same recycled shit daily."  
Tyler shakes his head. "Only if they're willing to work for it. True freedom doesn't come easy. You know that."

Fight Club is tomorrow night and I'm sure Tyler is going to make sure everyone there knows it too. If not him, I will.


	3. Chapter 3

"Time to wake up sleeping beauty."  
Tyler's standing in the doorway of my bedroom, if you can even call it that. I groan. The roof above me hangs precariously low, just waiting for the right moment to give in completely. Droplets of water fall around me sporadically; it's a surprise I'm not drenched. It must have rained during the night. The window's that have so much dirt on them they need to be scraped let in weak rays of sunlight. What time was it? Did Tyler even sleep at all? Was I even awake?  
"Tyler, come here." I need to know whether I'm dreaming. He's grinning in a way only Tyler can and entering my room, each step creaking loudly on our wood floors. I don't really have a bed, just a mildewy mattress that sits on the floor and is probably stuck from all the water damage. And even then, it's a hand me down from whoever lived here before us. The mattress sometimes smells like a science experiment and looks as though it should be on display as some ancient artifact. Thank god for Tyler's soap. This whole house is like the giant skeletal remains of a species that once thrived but now is only brought to life in history textbooks. Tyler hopes we don't follow in their footsteps. His mattress is not much better but at least he has a bed frame that keeps it dry and a few more sheets than I do. I know this because Tyler never closes his bedroom door and you can get a glimpse of what he has in it when you're going to the bathroom. Look too long though and he might sneak up on you, clap his hands over your ears and ask what you think you're looking at.  
Tyler doesn't really scare me anymore. If anything, his unpredictably excites me. When you lived most of your life in a haze of deja-vu's and reruns, you're grateful for the change. Spontaneity was never my forte. Tyler's standing next to my mattress now and since it lays on the floor I practically do too so he towers over me in his leather jacket and ripped jeans. His hair looks permanently tousled.  
"What is it pretty boy?"  
A cigarette hangs loosely from his mouth. I crave his taste of nicotine. I watch him reach into his jacket pocket and grab a pack of matches. Quickly, the match snaps with a spark and he lights the cigarette. I listen to the crack of sulfur, phosphorus, and potassium chlorate. The flame sizzles. It only takes one of these to burn down an entire complex. He drops the match on the floor. For a second, I envision it landing on my mattress. I can almost feel the heat as it catches on the sheet that covers me. The smell of burning flesh is so strong in my nose, I think I might actually be on fire. I can almost hear Tyler's laughter as I lay there, letting the flames envelope me. We are all ticking time bombs, ravaged by the flames of our own impulses.  
It hits a puddle, simmers then the flame is gone. I blink and try to remember that I'm still whole, that neither Tyler or me have moved an inch. I look and notice that the scar on my hand has calmed down. The area around it is no longer red, just thick with rebuilt skin. Tyler says what I'm thinking. "Kind of funny huh? No matter how many times you trash your body, it still tries to repair itself for you. How loyal."  
I try not to think about Chloe and all the other cancer patients whose bodies betray them and give up on them daily. I panic at the thought of my body already given up on me, leaving me to dream the rest of the days away. "Tyler, I need you to hit me." My voice is shaky. I sit up in bed and immediately feel woozy so I grit my teeth and squeeze my eyes in an attempt to deal with the feeling. Tyler puffs on his cigarette, viewing me and the predicament incredulously. "The day hasn't even started yet. What will Mr. Bossman say when you come in with a fresh black eye?" As if Tyler cares about what my boss thinks. Just two weeks ago I threatened to shoot my boss with a sawed-off shotgun for asking about Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club... unless you're Tyler. "I don't care. I need to know if I'm awake. Whether you're real or not." He doesn't make a move. At this point, I'm basically begging. "Tyler... please."

He laughs, then he leans over and climbs into bed with me. My insides are screaming. I feel like I'm going to die but in a good way- like suicide by your own standards. "Guess," he says. Smoke crowds around us both.  
I don't want to guess. This is too much for me to handle. If Tyler touches me, I may just have a heart attack. I'll never receive justice either; the fucker can't be arrested for my murder. I count to three and pray that when I open my eyes, I'll be alone. That I'll be waking up for real in my own bed in my old condo, with all my old furniture. No such luck. Tyler flashes a photo-worthy smile. "Still here." Shit. "Don't worry. Just buckle in and enjoy the ride." Everything happens so quickly afterwards. Tyler grabs my hands and pins me back onto the bed. His cigarette grazes my wrist in the process and I wince in pain. Ironic considering I let people beat the shit out of me for fun. "Now let's see... would the real Tyler do this?" He stubs the cigarette out on my bare arm and then my chest for extra measure. I bite my lip to stop from crying. Yes, this is very Tyler-esque. "Remember, only you can prevent condo fires." His sing-song voice snakes through me, first my ears then my brain. What a sick fuck. He flicks the cigarette onto the ground. I want to scream stop, push him off of me and run far, far away from his insanity. But something inside me won't let me. I've grown to love Tyler's organized chaos, and apparently my dick has too. I am Jack's uncontrollable lust.  
Tyler presses his lips onto mine. Ladies and gentleman, we've hit turbulence. Kissing Tyler is like nothing like I've experienced ever before. Fight Club can't even compare. His lips are puffy, scarred and taste like iron- clearly from all the fighting. But when I think about it I wouldn't trade it for anything else. I feel his tongue swirling slowly around the perimeter of my gums and I shiver. Victory laps? Every time he tongues a spot where a tooth should be, a bolt of electricity shoots through my body. I'm alive again. It takes me a while to realize he's counting my teeth. Something I've done countless times as a child but never has it ever felt so intimate. So unlike Tyler. This isn't happening. Disappointment envelopes me when he pulls away from my lips; his turn up into a smirk as his eyes shimmer deviously. Someone's flipped a switch- Tyler's all lit up.  
"I've knocked six teeth out of your mouth since we started Fight Club." He collapses beside me in a fit of giggles. Again, I question whether any of this is real. Tyler rolls over to face me and suddenly I feel self conscious. This is fucking stupid. "What about you?" he asks. I panic. "What?" is all I can muster. For a second I wish we were in his bed so this could feel a little more romantic. But Tyler's never been one for romance. "How many of mine have you gotten?" He throws an arm around me while the other arm busies itself by lighting another cigarette. The movement feels oddly masculine and I'm repulsed. "Oh, I- uh lost count." I wonder if that's what this was all about. I am Jack's naivety and disbelief. Bile and anger boil up inside of me.  
Tyler's still smirking. "Hmm, I guess we'll have to do it again then." He shifts as though he's going to make another move. I spit venom. "Get real." I try to move as far away from him as I can, but we're two grown me on a shitty twin mattress so it's hard. Fuck this. Something in Tyler changes too. He sits up in bed and runs a rough hand through his hair. For a minute, I'm concerned, but then I'm flinching from another cigarette butt and Tyler's standing over me again. Laughter escapes from his lips alongside more smoke. "Who said I was ever real to begin with?" he asks. I close my eyes again, and count to three to keep calm. When I open my eyes again, Tyler is gone.  
From upstairs, I can hear the sounds of someone knocking on the door below me. 


End file.
